EU exempts smart glasses from removable battery rules after US lobbying

The European Commission has quietly rewritten the EU's batteries regulation to exempt smart glasses, smartwatches, fitness trackers and electric toys from the requirement that consumers be able to remove and replace batteries themselves. The change, published on Tuesday as a delegated act, clears the most concrete regulatory obstacle that has delayed the full European rollout of Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, a product the company has positioned as its flagship entry into consumer augmented reality.

What the exemption actually does

The 2023 batteries regulation, which applies across the single market, mandates that portable batteries in consumer devices be readily removable and replaceable by the end-user. The rule was designed to extend product lifespans, reduce electronic waste and improve recycling rates. Smart glasses such as Meta's current models use sealed, integrated power cells that cannot be swapped without tools and technical skill, placing them in technical breach of the regulation. The Commission's delegated act creates a carve-out for "connected products" where opening the device would create safety risks or where technical limits make consumer access unrealistic.

A Commission spokesperson insisted the decision followed "a broad public consultation with consumer associations, industry stakeholders and the Member States" and was "not about regulating one specific product." The exemption also covers smartwatches and fitness trackers, categories where sealed designs are already standard, and electric toys, suggesting the logic extends beyond any single manufacturer. Nevertheless, the timing and the product at the centre of the political debate make the beneficiary unmistakable.

American pressure in Brussels

In March, Andrew Puzder, the United States Ambassador to the European Union, used a public event to criticise the battery rules as "so broad and so restrictive that it prevents the sale of this wonderful, jointly developed, U.S.-European product from being sold in the European Union." He described the glasses as "very stylish" and "very wonderful" and argued that Europe must "focus on allowing businesses to grow and allowing businesses to innovate." The intervention was unusually direct for a diplomatic representative commenting on a specific product's regulatory treatment.

The Commission's denial of political pressure is standard institutional language. What matters is the substance: the delegated act adopts precisely the exemption that would allow Meta's existing hardware to comply without redesign. The US Mission to the EU declined to comment on Tuesday's adoption. Meta did not respond to requests for comment.

Meta's European ambitions and the numbers behind them

Meta has bet heavily on the Ray-Ban partnership, leveraging EssilorLuxottica's distribution network and brand recognition. The French-Italian eyewear giant reported earlier this year that Meta smart glasses sales are ramping up "exponentially" in the United States. Worldwide, the company sold more than 7 million pairs in 2025. Yet the Europe, Middle East and Africa rollout remains sluggish: EssilorLuxottica's financial results noted that "more than half" of sales points in the region are still not served. The battery regulation was not the only barrier, privacy scrutiny has been intense, but it was a clear, binary compliance blocker that the Commission has now removed.

The exemption also benefits Samsung, Google and Apple, all of which are developing or rumoured to be developing their own smart-glasses products. For the European market, the change means consumers will eventually have access to the same hardware generations as buyers in the United States, rather than delayed or downgraded variants. Whether that translates into mass adoption remains an open question; the form factor has yet to prove itself beyond early adopters and niche professional uses.

Privacy regulators are not standing down

The battery exemption solves a product-compliance problem. It does nothing to address the parallel and arguably more consequential regulatory front: privacy. Since the first Ray-Ban Stories launched in Europe in 2021, Irish and Italian data-protection authorities have questioned whether the glasses make it sufficiently obvious to bystanders that they are being recorded. The concern sharpened this year when Swedish media reported that subcontractors for Meta in Kenya were reviewing "deeply private" footage captured by the glasses, including recordings of bathroom visits, banking details and sexual activity, to annotate data for artificial-intelligence training.

The European Data Protection Board, which coordinates national supervisors, has ordered a report into smart glasses that chair Anu Talus said should be finalised this summer. The board will then decide on further action. Meanwhile, Cláudio Texeira, head of digital policy at BEUC, Europe's largest consumer organisation, warned that "Europe should not dilute consumer protections" and that exemptions "should remain exactly that: genuine exceptions based on clear technical and safety evidence, not industry pressure."

Meta maintains that its glasses include built-in safeguards: an LED light that activates when the camera is triggered, tamper-detection technology to prevent the light being covered, and on-device storage unless the user chooses to share media with Meta. Whether those measures satisfy the GDPR's requirements for transparency, purpose limitation and data minimisation is the question the Data Protection Board will answer.

The delegated act procedure and the clock

The Commission's tweak takes the form of a delegated act, a legislative instrument that allows the executive to amend non-essential elements of a law without a full legislative process. The European Parliament and the Council of the EU now have two months to object. If neither institution raises a formal objection, the act is published in the Official Journal of the EU and enters into force 20 days later. In practice, objections are rare but not unprecedented; the Parliament has previously blocked delegated acts on taxonomy criteria and pesticide residues. Given the political sensitivity of both US lobbying and consumer privacy, MEPs may scrutinise this one closely.

Precedent and the scope of future carve-outs

BEUC's warning about precedent is not abstract. The batteries regulation is a cornerstone of the EU's circular-economy agenda, and its removability requirement was negotiated over years with industry input. Creating a broad category exemption for "connected products" based on safety and technical feasibility arguments could invite similar requests from manufacturers of smartphones, laptops or medical devices where sealed designs are also common. The Commission's consultation process will be examined for whether it genuinely assessed the technical arguments or simply accommodated a political request.

There is also a geopolitical dimension. The EU has been accused of regulating US tech companies disproportionately; the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act target predominantly American firms. Granting a visible exemption to a flagship Meta product can be read as a calibrated concession in a broader relationship that includes trade disputes, data-transfer negotiations and defence cooperation. Whether that calculus influenced the technical assessment is a question the Parliament's committees may pursue in the scrutiny period.